My family has gone camping every single summer of my life. We usually double dipped with a week at Ruth Lake with family friends and their respective hordes, and a week or two at Lake Tahoe in the D.L. Bliss campground with my mom's family.
Tahoe has been a tradition since my mother can remember, and she and her family have that particular campground worked over to find the best campsites.
(I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.)
At Ruth Lake, we'd always take over Fir Cove — back when the campground was "reservations only" during the week and "public" on the weekends. We'd book the whole campground so we'd have it (and the respective beach) to ourselves, and then we'd fill it with as many families and their kids, toys, and dogs as we could round up. Those weeks were spent happily playing kick the can and catching toad-tadpoles (huge suckers), hauling water for dishes and scrambling back and forth from the beach to the campground for snacks and sodas. Food was fair game, and toys were shared by all.
Of course, as we got older, the toys got better too.
The prime toy of my childhood was my dad's original windsurfing board. Made by Bic, the thing was easily 10 feet long, if not more, weighed a ton, and could carry as many as eight kids before sinking became a serious problem. We'd spend hours balancing, bickering, pushing, stealing, pirating, imagining, frog hunting, and more on that thing.
Sounds like a great time, huh? It was.
Today, the best toy is the Malibu speedboat, complete with tower, stereo, wakeboards, wakeskate, airchair, water skis, and inner tube. That's hard to beat now that the Bic board has floated its last breath and remains only in memory. Plus, it's hard to beat a toy as cool as a speedboat.
We power up first thing in the morning to get the glass, shivering as the water is barely warmed by the rising sun. I learned quickly that falling made you colder faster, whereas if you didn't fall, you stayed drier — and thus, warmer. I've wakeboarded on other lakes (Tahoe, Nacimiento, and Shasta), but I swear that Ruth Lake and that boat are the best. Nothing's better.
Though it didn't hurt my back quite so much when I was younger.
The other thing about camping is prime camping food. WHAT DOES YOUR FAMILY TAKE CAMPING?
For my family, we traditionally have fajitas, spaghetti, mac and cheese, pancakes, oatmeal, and those individually boxes cereals that come in all different flavors (like Fruit Loops, Pops, Frosted Flakes, Cocoa Puffs, and more). The trick is getting enough water though — my mom was smart when we were growing up though, and made the rule that before every soda we had to drink a large glass of water. We could have as many sodas as we wanted, we just had to drink the water first. It worked and we didn't have nearly as much soda as you might think, and we definitely got enough water.
Now that soda isn't quite the lure that it used to be, however, it is more of a challenge.
The bottom line though, is that nothing tastes quite as good as it does when you're camping after a long day of fun in the sun after a shower in water heated by the sun. And man oh man, is it ever hard to wait for that first star to come out that says it's time to hit the sack, with your stomach full of s'mores and content from the day's exertions.
TELL ME ABOUT SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE FAMILY MEMORIES!
SUNDAY: 3.5 miles
SATURDAY: a very lame 1.5 miles, + some wakeboarding and other camping activities
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